Retail checkout, particular grocery store checkout, has a number of inefficiencies. Consumers remove items from the shelves of stores place them in physical shopping carts, remove the items for scanning at a checkout station and place the items in bags, and then remove the items from the bags at home when the items are stored. Each item is handled at least three times.
Consumers are also not enamored with the grocery shopping experience believing it to be a necessary task that just waste their time but cannot be avoided. Retailers have developed a number of efficiencies, such as Self-Service Terminals (SSTs) where consumers scan their own items and pay to checkout without any assistance from a clerk. A few stores have implemented self-scanning while in the aisles but the checkout still requires checkout through a SST within the store before leaving. Furthermore, consumers sometimes struggle with locating barcodes on the items during self-checkouts.
Therefore, what is needed is an improved mechanism for shopping and self-checkout.